The field of the disclosure relates generally to emergency vehicles, and more particularly, to methods and systems for alerting drivers to approaching emergency vehicles.
Because of the often urgent circumstances of emergency incidents, many emergency vehicles travel at accelerated speeds (compared to other traffic) and ignore traffic signals and stops to ensure timely arrival to emergency incident locations or related locations, such as hospitals. Such driving practices may cause emergency vehicles to be at elevated risks of collision with other vehicles on the road. Due to such driving practices, many emergency vehicles use visual and auditory alerts, including lights and sirens, when traveling to and from emergency incident locations. Such alerts are used to mitigate the elevated risks of collision.
Despite the use of such alerts, the elevated risk of collision remains a problem. At least partially due to driver distraction, emergency vehicle alerts may not be noticed by drivers in a timely manner. When drivers fail to notice such alerts, the risk of collision with emergency vehicles increases. Accordingly, systems for improving the alerts of approaching emergency vehicles may be useful to mitigate the risk of collisions between emergency vehicles and other vehicles.